I Watched the VMAs

Since, I believe, 1994, when Green Day and the Beastie Boys performed back to back on a revolving stage,  capping off their summer-long stint together on the Lollapalooza tour, I've been immensely dedicated to the VMAs, if not because they ever feature any artists I actually care about, or because they ever honor any of the artists I actually care about, then just because the show provides me with a concrete way of checking in with the younger side of popular culture. It's my job, obviously, to stay at least somewhat on top of this stuff all year long, and I try to, but no matter how many You Tube videos I watch, or how many music charts I read, I still always feel somewhat disconnected, as I think every right-thinking almost-30-year-old probably should. So the VMAs allow me to feel a little bit closer to things, and I appreciate it. 

Anyway, the 2008 VMAs were on last night, and these are some things I thought about them:

1) Rihanna hasn't had a decent single since "Umbrella," and while I can appreciate the tone of her voice, it's becoming increasingly clear that it's also quite thin and completely unremarkable. Also, her outfit sorta scared me. 

2) Katy Perry is a monster, and I despise her, but I don't quite understand why she didn't get a real performance instead of the crappy, commercial-interrupted one with DJ AM and Travis from Blink-182. 

3) Britney Spears looked so nervous that I actually almost felt bad for her. 

4) Pink's performance was embarrassing. Walking through the fake streets of the Paramount lot, she kept breaking things and lighting stuff on fire and pushing dudes down flights of stairs, I guess acting out the lyrics to the dreadful "So What," in which she assures her ex-boyfriend that she's angry enough about their breakup that she's going to get into a fight, presumably with an anonymous stranger, but not so angry that she's forgotten about her status as a rock star, if I'm not mistaken, she's going to use to get a table at a nice restaurant? Or maybe not. I don't know. At the end of her horribly acted little walk through the town, she wound up on stage, stripped off some big jacket, then jumped around with her ass hanging out. As the song was ending, she turned around and opened a button on her already mostly open shirt, making sure to reveal to everyone the tape she'd placed on her nipples. This is how you know you're dealing with a REAL bad girl, apparently... calculated nipple slips. 

4) Lil Wayne's pants were really, really low, and I was somewhat disappointed that in a live setting, his voice isn't nearly as raspy as it is on record. But he seemed to be enjoying himself, and I think I like him more now than I did yesterday, which was already quite a bit. 

5) Christina Aguilera was lip-syncing for most of her performance, which strikes me as a sort of a waste. Also, the dancing was uninspired and her outfit was truly, truly unfortunate for a bunch of reasons I do not feel comfortable talking about. 

6) Lots of people whose opinions I respect have said lots of nice things about Paramore over the past year or so, and I never quite understood. But last night, watching their performance of "Misery Business," I realized that lead-singer Hayley Williams is no joke. She's like an emo, female version of Mike Patton, which I mean less in an offensive, "for me to like something, I have to be able to compare it to an old, male, rock and roll example" kind of way, but more in an "I can't believe how many different voices she has" kind of way.

7) Jordin Sparks, in response to British comedian and the evening's host, Russel Brand's jokes about the Jonas Brothers' "promise rings," said, "It's not bad to wear a promise ring because not everybody, guy or girl, wants to be a slut." Because if you have sex, you're a slut. Also worth noting: Sparks was the only person in the audience who didn't applaud when Russel Brand requested that Americans elect Obama. 

8) Kanye closed the show with a song on which he actually sings. It was fine, and his voice has some interesting qualities, but I can't be sure if I was hearing his actual voice or a vocoder. Which reminds me: everyone, please, please stop with the vocoder.